Been using iPhoto... what's next?!

Tbini87

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Hey guys,
I have been getting more serious about photography for about a year now. My wife and i just use our Macbook's iPhoto editing software which has been really fun so far. As we get more serious (shooting senior portraits, engagements and kid shoots), we would like to know what software we can upgrade to.
I look around to see what is out there, and it looks expensive and I can't really tell the difference of a lot of the different choice (elements seems like iPhoto, lightroom looks nice, photoshop looks very expensive). So, what would you guys recommend for people who are looking at shooting engagements, senior pics, family pics, and weddings in the near future. Thanks guys.

Travis
 
thought i would add that it looks like my wife and i would be able to buy the software at student prices which looks dramatically reduced from the standard price.
 
hey guys any help would be great. maybe i posted this in the wrong spot. i'm guessing that i should get the most expensive one that i can afford... but just don't want to be throwing money away by going all out if i am only going to use a fraction of what cs5 could do or something like that.
 
Photoshop would be the 'best' choice...but yet it's very expensive. The student discount is great though, so if you can get that, go for it.

That being said, Photoshop is a huge program and it meant for way more than photo editing. Photoshop Elements is a stripped down version that still does most of what a photographer might want, and it's a lot cheaper.

Lightroom is a fantastic program. It helps to organize and streamline your workflow. It can edit & tweak your images, but it's not really a replacement for an image editor like Photoshop. There is also a great student discount.

My advice would be to get Elements and Lightroom and use them together. Or Lightroom and Photoshop if you can afford it.
 
I was at at photoshow in the spring, and one of the speakers lives for Aperture on the Mac and Lightroom on Windows. His statement was they are almost the same but Aperture just works better on OSX.
 
Photoshop would be the 'best' choice...but yet it's very expensive. The student discount is great though, so if you can get that, go for it.

That being said, Photoshop is a huge program and it meant for way more than photo editing. Photoshop Elements is a stripped down version that still does most of what a photographer might want, and it's a lot cheaper.

Lightroom is a fantastic program. It helps to organize and streamline your workflow. It can edit & tweak your images, but it's not really a replacement for an image editor like Photoshop. There is also a great student discount.

My advice would be to get Elements and Lightroom and use them together. Or Lightroom and Photoshop if you can afford it.

thanks mike, you always seem to help me out a ton. so, if i were to say that i was planning on shooting portraits and weddings seriously within the next year, what would you recommend.
i would be willing to shell out the cash and take the time to learn it if i am going to be charging good money to shoot these events. i just don't want to buy some cheap thing and not be satisfied in 6 months because i can't do EVERYTHING i want to do.

my wife is also curious on creating water marks. Can a watered down version like elements still do that? do you think elements can produce professional finished products that people would expect from a wedding photog? Thanks mike.
 
I was at at photoshow in the spring, and one of the speakers lives for Aperture on the Mac and Lightroom on Windows. His statement was they are almost the same but Aperture just works better on OSX.
Aperture 3 looked affordable, but i wasn't sure how intensive it was. Can it do major editing, watermarks, etc?
 
haven't tried watermarking in Aperture. I use photoshop for most of my stuff, I found Aperture to be Iphoto on steroids though.
 
haven't tried watermarking in Aperture. I use photoshop for most of my stuff, I found Aperture to be Iphoto on steroids though.

that sounds fun to me! especially since iphoto is the only software i have ever used. it looked somewhat affordable too, though the reviews on amazon have been good and bad.
 
I've been using aperture for a week or so editing Raw, and yes it is like iphoto on steroids BUT;

It is very Ram hungry, I think there's a memory leak that needs fixing so that may change, but if you don't have at least 4GB of Ram in your mac, maybe look at upgrading it or it'll chug a bit.

There are some features you can't get without plug-ins, considering Apple's software history, these things will be added eventually, if not in 4.0

It's closer to how iphoto works than lightroom, some people dislike how lightroom stores and views photos, I don't mind it personally.

Overall, it's got everything you'd want from the app, and does pretty much everything the same as LR, if you can get a student discount get LR/Photoshop, if not, look at aperture, but remember that you'll need photoshop to do heavy 'editing' beyond adjusting your colours and stuff.

Go to the apple website, and the adobe website, get the 30 day trials and go shoot a bunch in RAW, see how you like the outcomes.
 
Go to the apple website, and the adobe website, get the 30 day trials and go shoot a bunch in RAW, see how you like the outcomes.

I love my Macs, but Aperture has serious issues when a library gets too big. I split my one library into 4 different libraries for the types of images I shoot. They were fine until each of those libraries got big.

LR is very similar in functionality to Aperture. It took some getting used to, but finding good data management is what ended up being important to me. I still like the workflow of Aperture, but when the workflow includes a spinning beach ball on a regular basis, it is time to move on. For me, all heavy edits are done in PS anyway, so consider what your long term needs will be. A 30 day trial may not be enough to show all the shortcomings of the software.
 
LR3 on a Mac runs flawlessly for me and is what I use most of the time. CS5 gets used when necessary and the work flow between the two is excellent.
 
Go to the apple website, and the adobe website, get the 30 day trials and go shoot a bunch in RAW, see how you like the outcomes.

I love my Macs, but Aperture has serious issues when a library gets too big. I split my one library into 4 different libraries for the types of images I shoot. They were fine until each of those libraries got big.

LR is very similar in functionality to Aperture. It took some getting used to, but finding good data management is what ended up being important to me. I still like the workflow of Aperture, but when the workflow includes a spinning beach ball on a regular basis, it is time to move on. For me, all heavy edits are done in PS anyway, so consider what your long term needs will be. A 30 day trial may not be enough to show all the shortcomings of the software.

Yeah, this is something that has been told to me before, and the general feeling around it is edit in aperture, show in iphoto.

It's a generally smoother program for simply viewing photos and slideshows anyway.

I ended up with Aperture due to a non-returnable item and an on the spot discount. My iMac is over 4 years old at this point and it handles aperture fine to me, but I'm also not in a major rush to do things. I think a lot of these types of issues get sorted when people use the feedback forms, that stuff does get looked at.
 
Hey guys,
I have been getting more serious about photography for about a year now. My wife and i just use our Macbook's iPhoto editing software which has been really fun so far. As we get more serious (shooting senior portraits, engagements and kid shoots), we would like to know what software we can upgrade to.
I look around to see what is out there, and it looks expensive and I can't really tell the difference of a lot of the different choice (elements seems like iPhoto, lightroom looks nice, photoshop looks very expensive). So, what would you guys recommend for people who are looking at shooting engagements, senior pics, family pics, and weddings in the near future. Thanks guys.

Travis
Some good DAM software and an understanding of effective DAM. DAM = Digital Asset Management.

Amazon.com: The DAM Book: Digital Asset Management for Photographers (9780596523572): Peter Krogh: Books
 
As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases.
Photoshop would be the 'best' choice...but yet it's very expensive. The student discount is great though, so if you can get that, go for it.

That being said, Photoshop is a huge program and it meant for way more than photo editing. Photoshop Elements is a stripped down version that still does most of what a photographer might want, and it's a lot cheaper.

Lightroom is a fantastic program. It helps to organize and streamline your workflow. It can edit & tweak your images, but it's not really a replacement for an image editor like Photoshop. There is also a great student discount.

My advice would be to get Elements and Lightroom and use them together. Or Lightroom and Photoshop if you can afford it.

thanks mike, you always seem to help me out a ton. so, if i were to say that i was planning on shooting portraits and weddings seriously within the next year, what would you recommend.
i would be willing to shell out the cash and take the time to learn it if i am going to be charging good money to shoot these events. i just don't want to buy some cheap thing and not be satisfied in 6 months because i can't do EVERYTHING i want to do.

my wife is also curious on creating water marks. Can a watered down version like elements still do that? do you think elements can produce professional finished products that people would expect from a wedding photog? Thanks mike.

You might want to take a look at this as well. Highly thought of but pricey compared to LR or Aperture. Raw converter software for professional photographers

Give the trial version a go and see what you think if you are interested. I would probably be using Capture One if I didn't have Photo shop. Since I do I use LR on my Mac. The work flow is very smooth between the two.
 

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